Initially a front group for the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Stop the War’s leading lights — Lindsey German (ex-SWP), Andrew Murray (Communist Party of Britain), George Galloway (the Respect Party), John Rees (ex-SWP) — will be familiar to anyone who has been involved in campaigns against war, racism and fascism over the past 10 years.

Campaigning against war is, of course, an honorable British tradition. But for the far-left, anti-war politics has the double purpose of hoovering up young and impressionable recruits to Communist and Trotskyist political parties. And, as the left-wing activist and comedian Mark Thomas put it, “[Stop the War’s] leaders are old hands at controlling popular fronts.”

The other famous Stop the War figure is, of course, its former chairman (2011 to 2015), Jeremy Corbyn. The rise of Corbyn to the summit of the Labour Party means that anti-war politics is now mainstream.

But not just any anti-war politics: As well as a front for party recruitment, Stop the War promotes a very specific brand of “anti-imperialism” in which, to paraphrase the long-dead German socialist Karl Liebknecht, the main enemy is always at home. Put another way, if the United States invaded hell, the Stop the War Coalition would soon be making favorable remarks about the Devil.

* * *

The Stop the War Coalition was launched in 2001, two weeks after 9/11. Initially a campaign to oppose an American military response to the terrorist attacks, the first meeting was chaired by Lindsey German and attracted around 2,000 people. Other influential founders of Stop the War included the late left-wing Labour MP Tony Benn and then-backbench Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The group’s first breakthrough into the political mainstream came two years later, when it organized the biggest anti-war march in British history against the invasion of Iraq. The demonstration, which took place in central London on February 15, 2003, is estimated to have attracted around 1 million people. On the back of the march, Stop the War was able to bring together significant — if far smaller — crowds for similar protests, such as when it campaigned against the threat of British military action in Libya in 2011 and in Syria in 2013.

Stop the War’s second breakthrough came in August of this year when its chair, Corbyn, was unexpectedly elected leader of the Labour Party (he was replaced as chair of the group by Andrew Murray).

A man of fixed mental habits if nothing else, Corbyn has continued his close association with Stop the War since becoming Labour leader, confirming this week that he plans to attend the group’s Christmas fundraiser Friday.

* * *

Anti-war politics is now mainstream; but as a consequence, mainstream media outlets and politicians are scrutinizing Stop the War to an unprecedented degree.

Former Labour shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt on Sunday urged Corbyn to “step back” from the Stop the War Coalition, calling it a “disreputable organization.” Corbyn hit back, defending the group by pointing out that Stop the War had “repeatedly called it right” over the past 10 years in opposing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Then, on Tuesday, influential Green Party MP Caroline Lucas announced she was stepping down from her role as vice president of Stop the War — “in light of some of [the group’s] recent positions.” Lucas was apparently upset by an article put up on the group’s website the day after the Paris attacks — and subsequently taken down after a Twitter storm — which claimed France was “[reaping] the whirlwind of Western support for extremist violence in the Middle East.”

Lucas also expressed concern that “some Syrian voices were not given an opportunity to speak at a recent meeting organized by [Stop the War] in parliament.” The meeting in question was held in November to discuss the case against British military intervention in Syria.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell (also a Green Party member) attended the meeting in question and said that some Syrian victims of President Assad’s brutalities turned up to the event anyway. However, when the session was opened for questions the Syrians “were not allowed to speak,” Tatchell said. He added that Stop the War has a “long history of blocking Syrian democrats, left-wingers and civil society activists from speaking.”

For its part, Stop the War issued a statement calling the accusations “venomous and abusive attacks.”

But Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq since 2004, says Stop the War long ago “degenerated into a sect.”

“When [Stop the War] tried to persuade Labour to back troops out of Iraq and were massively defeated at the 2004 Labour Party conference, they turned viciously on the independent trade union movement,” Kent said. “Its leaders were denounced as ‘stooges’ and ‘quislings.’”

“It was one thing to oppose the invasion,” he added. “But another to rat on those who were struggling to make the best of the fall of a genocidal dictator.”

* * *

Corbyn was involved with Stop the War through some of its most sordid controversies. Soon after campaigning against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Stop the War put out a statement appearing to support the violent insurgency tearing that country apart. The statement, signed by the officers of Stop the War, called for an end to the occupation and, crucially, recognized “the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends.”

This led to the resignation of former railway drivers’ union leader Mick Rix from the Stop the War executive. “If you think I am going to sit back and agree with beheadings, kidnappings, torture and brutality, and outright terrorization of ordinary Iraqis and others, then you can forget it,” Rix said at the time.

Not long after, an early day motion was put down in the House of Commons by several Labour MPs condemning Stop the War’s position and asking the group to “reassure the public that they have not lost their moral bearings.” Corbyn, then a backbench MP, put down a rival motion deleting the amendment and blaming the violence in Iraq on coalition forces.

More recently, Stop the War courted controversy by appearing to back the Russian annexation of Crimea and by hosting articles comparing members of the International Brigades who fought Franco in the 1930s to Islamic State fighters. Paradoxically, considering such flattering comparisons, Stop the War has also been accused by the campaign group Syria Solidarity U.K. of tacitly supporting Assad. “Andrew Murray’s … [Syria] is one where there is no change of regime, and no demand for Assad to step down: In other words, a continuation of the Assad regime,” the group wrote.

* * *

In Britain at least, the reputations of politicians who prosecuted the 2003 war in Iraq lie in tatters. Yet because the Stop the War Coalition, as Corbyn puts it, “called it right” over the invasion of Iraq, the organization has been given a free pass ever since — despite its history of equivocation when it comes to anti-American dictators and jihadist violence.

If there is a silver lining for Labour Party moderates in Corbyn’s rise to the leadership summit, perhaps it is found in the fact that a public spotlight is finally being shone on the morally dubious politics of the influential Stop the War Coalition.

James Bloodworth isa columnist for the International Business Times.

This article was updated remove an incorrect reference to Mark Thomas being a former member of the SWP.

Related stories on these topics:

Mike Power

As you say the world of the British far left is a small one, but the number of communist organisations that have emerged from endless doctrinal splits is very large. As a result you are wrong about Andrew Murray’s political affiliation – he is in the Communist Party of Britain – without the Great.

Posted on 12/11/15 | 12:05 PM CEST

David

One small correction: Mark Thomas is not a former member of the SWP – he’s an anarchist, from a completely separate political tradition. The article cited attributes party membership to an unnamed friend.

Posted on 12/11/15 | 3:15 PM CEST

Steve

And so the incessant barrage of snark against Corbyn continues, with Politico once more playing the man and not the ball. It’s become almost comic… I’ve yet to read a single article about Corbyn on this site that follows the minimum journalistic standards of simply setting out his policies and the arguments for and against. Instead, we are offered a constant diet of taint by insinuation and association. Corbyn is not an SWP member, and not a Communist. He warned against the potential appalling consequences of the Iraq invasion – and has sadly been proved right on all points.
Corbyn’s position against bombing Syria is mainstream political common sense in most European countries. But instead of actually talking about this position for once, we’re told how appalling some of the people who agreed with him are, damning him by association. From where I am (in Germany) this kind of outright spin – taking Corbyn’s anti-war politics, linking them with more extreme elements, and then trying to damn them all collectively as a bizarre and dangerous aberration seems both wilfully malignant, and provincially blinkered: It reflects a narrow Anglo-American perspective that certainly doesn’t reflect the political debate in Europe as a whole.
Come on Politico. You can do lots of languages… but surely you can do more than one viewpoint? Or at least a bit of journalistic objectivity?

Posted on 12/11/15 | 5:27 PM CEST

Simon

I’m sure everything else you say is 100% accurate, but Caroline Lucas resigned quietly a month ago and didn’t announce it. She says so on Twitter. I agree with a previous comment, this article is just a lame attempt at more smear – amplify the shrill voices calling for him to step back in order to make it seem like consensus.

Posted on 12/11/15 | 6:57 PM CEST

Steve

Out of curiosity, I headed over to politico.com to see how the American version of this site is reporting on Bernie Sanders, probably the closest equivalent to Corbyn in US politics. And… it’s fine…. just plain old reporting on the events and the issues behind them. No big deal. Politico.com seems happy to let their audience make up their own mind.

….I then clicked on the Jeremy Corbyn tag on politico.eu. Try it yourself, readers.

[…] more interested in opposing Western Imperialism than intervening in humanitarian disasters. Indeed, it was founded by Trotskyites as a front to recruit members to Trotskyism. This shows that not only is Jeremy Corbyn a member of a […]